‘Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic’
Little old England manages to encompass many global water problems – scarcity, overabstraction, pollution, underinvestment, government and regulatory failings, environmental degradation and corporate misconduct – all within the confines of one small country in the far west of Europe.
[....]
Freshwater shortages, once considered a local issue, are increasingly a global risk. In every annual risk report since 2012, the World Economic Forum has included water crisis as one of the top-five risks to the global economy. Half of the global population – almost 4 billion people – live in areas with severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year, while half a billion people face severe water scarcity all year round.
[....]
Covid brought water issues into sharper focus. “It’s not like Covid woke us up to the need for water for hygiene; we already knew that,” Gary White, CEO of Water.org, told me. “But I certainly think we hadn’t seen the lack of access to water and sanitation as a global crisis before. When somebody [being unable to] wash their hands in one country becomes the critical link to the spread of disease, then suddenly water and hygiene becomes a global risk.” In June 2021, Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said: “Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic, and there is no vaccine to cure it.”
[....]
The good and bad news is that water crises are usually caused by human mismanagement, not climate. But, as climate breakdown bites, precipitation patterns change and climate refugees are forced to move, the timeframe to get our act together is becoming ever shorter. We are currently using up the water sources on which our very existence relies. We can continue doing that until the very last drop. Or we can decide to change our approach before it’s too late. The world isn’t running out of water – people are.
[....]
The waste that happens in our water systems, the pollution of our rivers, the leakages in the underground pipes, the building codes that allow developers to build water- inefficient houses: all that happens before we even turn a tap on. The wastage, the 150l a day, is built into the system. There is a lot we can do as individuals, but those things almost all boil down to water-efficient appliances, rainwater capture and greywater recycling, all of which could and should be integral to water company practices and building regulations.